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Please join outstanding activists and panelists, Nancy Bereano, Martha Ferger, Gabe Shapiro and Nicole LaFave, and come share stories of how you’ve taken action for social justice. Free, open to everyone!

Saturday June 25th, 2016 – 2:00 to 4:30pm

The History Center in Tompkins County 401 E. State St., Suite 100, Ithaca, NY 14850

Sharing Our Stories of Action for Social Justice and Transformation

A series presented by The History Center in Tompkins County & The Dorothy Cotton Institute

Ferger, left, being arrested at the site of a proposed natural gas storage expansion in Schuyler County, fall 2014

ITHACA — Join us on Saturday June 25th for the second event in the series “Sharing Our Stories of Action for Social Justice and Transformation.” This series, done in partnership and collaboration with the Dorothy Cotton Institute, will focus on sharing personal narratives and oral histories that highlight individual contributions towards social change across a broad range of issues and social movements. At this event, four panelists will share their work for change and address what they had to overcome and what sustained them. After the panel, all will be invited to meet in small groups to share their personal stories of work for social change. Panelists: Nancy Bereano, Martha Ferger, Gabe Shapiro and Nicole LaFave.

Let us know if you’re coming via the Facebook Event Page and be sure to share it with your friends!

About the Presenters….

Nancy Bereanohas lived in Ithaca as a lesbian for 36 out of her 48 years here. She was the founding editor and publisher of Firebrand Books, a groundbreaking, award-winning, and nationally recognized lesbian and feminist press. Nancy has been an activist for most of her adult life, a troublemaker for all of it, and was instrumental in the passage of LGBT anti-discrimination legislation for the City of Ithaca and Tompkins County. She is a community representative on the City of Ithaca’s Workforce Diversity Committee, a member of ACTION (Activists Committed to Interrupting Oppression Now), and a participant and trained facilitator for Talking Circles on Race and Racism.

Martha Fergermoved to Dryden in 1955 at age 31 with her husband, Dr. John Ferger, and 3 young daughters. She has been active on a wide variety of public issues ever since, ranging from opposition to nuclear weapons testing in the early days to efforts to save Seneca Lake from gas storage more recently. You might have seen her picture (in a film by Earth Justice) being led away in handcuffs from a demonstration at Crestwood, or met her knocking on your door with the petition that helped persuade the Town Board make Dryden the first town in NY State to ban fracking. She has also been among the activists in Ithaca seeking to have cameras placed on all police in an effort to decrease and document abuse towards people of color and LGBTQI residents. Now, at age 92, she hopes to continue activities of this sort for a few more years. There are so many things in the world to worry about!

Gabe Shapiro is a rising third year at Hampshire College, studying energy, climate change and organizing. He works with groups across the Northeast fighting the build-out of fracking infrastructure.

Nicole LaFave is Program Coordinator, Community Service and Leadership Development at the Cornell Public Service Center. She was born and raised in Harlem, New York. At the Center for Culture, Race and Ethnicity at Ithaca College, Nicole found her passion for race relations in the US and began exploring strategies for denouncing oppressive systems. She decided to stay in Ithaca after graduating from IC because she believe this small city had the power and ambition to cultivate a space where true social change is more than possible but sustainable. She currently sits on the Ithaca City Community Police Review Board, is a co-founder and organizer of Black Lives Matter Ithaca, and is a newly elected member of the Ithaca City School District Board of Education. She holds a BA from Ithaca College in Sociology with a concentration in juvenile criminal studies, and race and ethnic relations. Her studies focused on equity issues, making the classroom and curriculum successful for children with complex needs through project-based learning.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of a major victory in history’s greatest freedom struggle. President Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965, signaled the demise of the American Jim Crow system of racial segregation and discrimination.

The effort to achieve this landmark legislation and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 coincided with the success of anticolonial movements that brought independence to more than fifty nations during the two decades following World War II. Systems of racial domination would remain in South Africa and Rhodesia, and colonialism would continue in some nations, but by mid-1960s a majority of humanity had achieved at least basic citizenship rights. Although we realize now that these victories were limited, they were nonetheless historic — comparable in importance to the nineteenth-century international campaign that ended chattel slavery. The transformation during the past two centuries of the world’s slaves and impoverished laborers…

On Monday our dear friend and mentor, Dr. Vincent Harding, passed away. Many of you were able to hear him speak in December at the DCI Gala when he and his wife, Aljosie Aldrich Knight, visited Ithaca. He had an aneurism and multiple surgeries over the last week. Althou

We will share more about this extraordinary man and great spirit in future postings. He embodied love and encouragement.

The Art of Collaborative Leadership:
Building Networks of Interconnected Leaders

Akaya Windwood, President, Rockwood Leadership Institute

Good leadership requires moving across boundaries of sector, race, ideology, class, and political affiliation. Instead of competing for resources or working in isolation, leaders should reach across divides to develop healthy networks of trust and collaboration. In this audio lecture from the Stanford Social Innovation Review’s Nonprofit Management Institute, Rockwood Leadership Institute president Akaya Windwood discusses how we can get movements and sectors to work together to advance the common good. She shares specific approaches and tools for leaders to step out of their comfort zones. These enable a collective effort that builds mutually beneficial relationships.

Akaya Windwood, currently president of Rockwood Leadership Institute, had previously served as Rockwood’s director of leadership development for three years. Windwood has more than 30 years of experience working for social justice. An executive leadership coach and organizational consultant, she is nationally known for her commitment to social and economic justice, and for building a compelling vision for effectiveness and collaboration in the nonprofit and social benefit sectors.